27-03-2025
Detained population at Tacoma ICE center nearing capacity as immigration arrests increase
The population of people held in the privately-run immigration detention center in Tacoma has continued to grow since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, and an activist group and lawyers say it is nearing capacity.
The Northwest ICE Processing Center, which holds people who are suspected of being in the country illegally or awaiting deportation, has bed space for 1,575 people. Elizabeth Benki, a directing attorney for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project's detention work, estimated Wednesday that 1,400 to 1,500 people are detained at the facility.
La Resistencia, a group that advocates for closing the NWIPC and ending deportations, said Wednesday that there are more than 1,500 people held there. According to ICE statistics, the facility's average daily population hasn't been over 1,181 since before the COVID-19 pandemic. That number is the guaranteed minimum detainees ICE is required to pay its contractor, the GEO Group, for overseeing.
'There was a sharp increase after Jan. 20,' Benki said. 'What we're seeing, I think, is a combination of two things. I think there's more people being detained, and there's also fewer people getting released, particularly on bond.'
Before Jan. 20, Benki said the facility's population had hovered between 700 and 800 for a couple years.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had 46,269 people in detention across the country as of March 9, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). That's the most people it has had detained since October 2019.
ICE detentions also recently surpassed the number of people detained by Customs and Border Patrol for the first time in four years, according to TRAC.
One significant effect the NWIPC's rising population has had on people who are detained, Benki said, is that court hearings are becoming backed up. If someone is filling out an application for asylum for example, Benki said, individual calendar hearings for it are being set for September or October.
'That's a really long time to wait for your final hearing,' Benki said. 'And when the population was lower around 700 to 800, the wait was several months shorter.'
The estimates provided by Benki and La Resistencia don't line up with ICE's statistics on the facility's average daily population. According to ICE, the NWIPC had an average daily population of 834 people as of March 3, up from 709 on Jan. 6.
The average daily population is calculated based on the average population during all days in the fiscal year to that point. According to TRAC, that means that if detainees are held at a location for a limited time, the average daily population might be much lower than the real number of individuals detained at that center on any given day.
A spokesperson for ICE did not reply to a request for comment.
Rufina Reyes, an organizer with La Resistencia, said the group tracks the number of people held at the facility by keeping in contact with detainees daily and by monitoring contracted ICE flights into and out of Boeing Field in King County.
Reyes said detainees have told La Resistencia that all of the living units are full.
'Right now we know the capacity in there is really bad,' Reyes said.
Detainees worry about the facility's ability to provide them medical attention, Reyes said.
That issue was mentioned last week in a lawsuit brought by a longtime Washington resident who has been detained at the NWIPC since early February. Ramon Rodriguez Vasquez, whose class-action challenges the Tacoma Immigration Court's alleged refusal to consider releasing people from the facility on bond, said the facility failed to get him his daily medication for high blood pressure for more than a week. He said as a result he suffered from headaches, stomach pain and inflamed feet.
Asked about staffing at the facility, Benki said her sense is that the company that runs the NWIPC, the GEO Group, didn't immediately have the number of staff it needed to have a sharp increase in the detained population.
A spokesperson for the GEO Group declined to comment and directed The News Tribune to send inquiries to ICE.
The GEO Group is based in Florida and operates correctional facilities around the world. Last year it reported more than $1.6 billion in revenue for its secure services operations in the United States, according to the Security and Exchange Commission.
In a Feb. 27 earnings call with investors, executive chairman of GEO George Zoley said he believed the company was in a position to scale up its secure residential care housing for ICE from 15,000 beds to between 31,000 and 32,000.
'We believe our company faces an unprecedented opportunity at this time to play a role in supporting President Trump's new administration's policy,' Zoley said.
The NWIPC has long faced criticism from activists and human-rights groups over its conditions for detainees, which facility administrator Bruce Scott has disputed. In an opinion piece published last year, he said the facility was safe, secure and humane.
Detainees have staged hunger strikes to protest conditions and what they describe as lack of due process. On March 2, a group of 51 people detained at the NWIPC refused to eat for the day, according to La Resistencia, demanding an improvement in the facility's meals and that their cases be properly processed.
Protests are planned to take place outside the NWIPC this week. The Washington State Labor Council, which represents over 600 local unions in the state, said union members and labor leaders would rally at the facility Thursday at 5:30 p.m. to protest the detentions of union members Alfredo 'Lelo' Juarez and Lewelyn Dixon.
On Saturday, La Resistencia plans to rally with organizers and community members outside the NWIPC from 1-3 p.m. In a news release, the group said it would be demanding the immediate release of all migrants detained at the detention center.
